The Coldest Blood (16 page)

He poured wine and lit a cigarette, going back to the window to drop the blinds.

‘It’s night now,’ he said, the need for sleep almost overwhelming. ‘You’ve no idea how cold it is out there. The monkey puzzle tree – the big one on the lawn – that’s just crystal, like one of those cheap trinkets we used to buy on the coast. And I can see Humph in the Capri – he’s asleep. He’s been listening to the football – I think the excitement wears him out. He’s got the dog on his lap – or it could be the other way round…’

He drew deeply on the cigarette, the nicotine bringing tears to his eyes.

Laura’s auburn hair lay in a fan on the pillowcase. He lay down beside her and ran his fingers through it, smelling the rich natural scent of the oil, as pungent as a child’s.

‘Why do you think some kids never get adopted? They spend their whole lives in foster homes, or care. I guess it’s like animals – people always want the perfect one, the youngest one, the one they can mould themselves. They don’t want a history, they don’t want issues.’ That word again.

The COMPASS jumped into life, the roll of paper clattering as it fed out of the computer printer.

HOLIDAY PLEASE.

She never said please. Dryden sensed that she felt the word was too much; a symbol of dependency and need.

‘Of course. I’m sorry. It’s just so cold, and we can’t go far. A cottage, perhaps – the coast, like we said? How about one with an Aga?’

There was silence then, and he knew this was a reproach, for making her plead, and for failing to disguise his reluctance – a reluctance which sprang not from any rational fear, but from anxiety about what might happen if he took his wife away from The Tower. The leaving in itself would be good for them both, even if it suggested the possibility of not returning.

22

Humph dropped him on the riverbank, where the ice was now thick and pitted with the tracks of pebbles and stones pitched across its surface. A pair of ungainly swans strolled in midstream like cowboys. Dryden walked south past the Maltings and the Cutter Inn to a terrace of Victorian houses which looked out over the watermeadows. At the end of the row was a boathouse, the temporary HQ of the Fen Skating Association. The ground floor had originally housed the boats, while upstairs there was a balcony outside a function room behind a single picture window. Here Dryden had watched the Cambridge crew in training the previous year during a press event before the annual Varsity boat race, a memory clouded by six large glasses of Pimm’s No. 1 sucked through a straw.

The wooden doors which ran the entire length of the boat-house frontage were shut, leaving a small wicket gate as the only entry point. Inside, trestle tables had been set up between the low-hanging boats, piled high with skater registration forms. The space was crowded with men in Christmas sweaters and other assorted festive knitwear. Fluorescent yellow stewards’ jackets hung in lines, above a rank of metal lanterns. There was a small kitchen at the rear and soup was being decanted into thermos flasks. Dryden found Ed Bardolph unwrapping loudhailers from a packing case.

Dryden shook his hand. ‘Ed.’

Bardolph’s face was flushed with the cold and adrenaline, and the room buzzed with childlike excitement.

‘The river’s nearly solid,’ said Dryden.

Bardolph nodded, checking a small oven crammed with heating pies. ‘Should be safe by 8.00pm we reckon. We might try and rerun the long-distance race to Cambridge. They did it in ’63.’

‘Time?’

‘Late. Maybe midnight. We could wait a day but the forecast is not 100 per cent – there’s warm air up there, if it touches ground level we could lose the lot and freezing rain would ruin the ice.’

‘I’m sorry…’ said Dryden, stepping closer. ‘I’ve got some bad news that you may not have heard yet. Can we talk… in private?’

They climbed the stairs. Bardolph had clearly been dividing his time between his real job and his passion, and had set up an impromptu office on the bar in the function room complete with fax, laptop, mobile charger, and file case.

‘I can work pretty much anywhere,’ he said, as if trying to convince himself. ‘And we only get the weather once in a blue moon.’

They went out on to the balcony. The view across the frozen Fen was breathtaking, a living Dutch masterpiece of gliding figures.

‘It’s Joe Petulengo, Declan’s friend. He’s dead.’

‘What?’ Bardolph leaned back against the low balcony rail.

‘An accident, probably. Out at his farm. He fell, into water, and froze to death.’

‘Jesus,’ said Bardolph. ‘That’s dreadful. You know the link…’

Dryden nodded. ‘Petulengo was one of the victims of abuse at St Vincent’s – like Declan. They grew up together, in care. Did you meet him?’

‘No – never. I didn’t talk to Declan about the case either
– except right at the start. It’s difficult. I work for the social services department and they were likely to end up in the dock too over St Vincent’s… but Declan was my client. I advised him to see a third party before agreeing to give evidence against the diocese – a colleague from outside the county. We played it by the book.’

‘I didn’t say you didn’t,’ said Dryden. ‘So what’s Chips Connor got to do with it?’

‘Connor! How…?’ Bardolph looked out over the frozen Fen, knocking his gloved fists together in frustration. ‘Look. Wait there.’

He went inside and Dryden could see him rifling through the box folders, before returning with a single Manila file. ‘You need to understand,’ he said, ‘the two cases are linked.’ He retrieved some reading glasses and scanned the first page of the file.

‘The friendship between Joe and Declan was very important, but they were vastly different characters. Declan had been inside, he’d become very timid, a kind of recluse in many ways. Joe was a very confident man – at least that’s what Declan always said. He’d made a success of his business, he had power – something Declan never had. Anyway, several months ago one of the evening newspapers ran an appeal for new witnesses in the Connor case – Connor’s wife had decided to mark the thirtieth anniversary of his sentence with another attempt to get him freed. She’d always said he was innocent, and she wasn’t the only one. So Joe saw the story and got in contact. The Connor family solicitors…’ here Bardolph flicked through the pages. ‘Holme & Sons – of Lynn. They interviewed Joe and asked him to try and get Declan to come forward as well. If it had been the other way round, if Declan had seen the appeal, he would have kept quiet – I’m sure of that.’

‘But he was a witness too, and he agreed to step up?’

‘Joe was very important to Declan – a mentor, I guess. If Joe was happy to do it – so was Declan. George Holme interviewed them both, separately, and took statements. They were in care at the time they were staying at the holiday camp. It became clear during Holme’s questioning about what happened at the camp that they had been badly treated at St Vincent’s – I can’t tell you exactly why because it involves the sister – but it all came out.’

‘There was abuse in the holiday camp?’

‘I didn’t say that. Anyway, the important thing is that Holme knew about the action being co-ordinated by Hugh Appleyard against St Vincent’s – solicitors are a pretty close bunch. So Joe and Declan found themselves under pressure to come forward. I don’t think Joe thought twice about it. After a lot of soul searching, Declan also agreed to give evidence against the diocese, to tell a court what he’d suffered at St Vincent’s.’

‘So it’s not a coincidence that they are involved in both cases?’

‘No. Not at all. It’s all down to Joe coming forward. Then one thing led to another.’

‘So what happens now?’

Bardolph looked out over the ice. ‘St Vincent’s? They would have been compelling in court, I think – especially together. I never actually met Joe, but it was clear they were close. Brothers, almost. They’d shared that childhood, that sense of being victims, a very intense emotion. I don’t think any court could have ignored their evidence, or put it aside as hysterical, or contrived. But they were not the only victims. There’ll be delays, but it’ll come out in the end. The abuse – you know – was pretty widespread, institutionalized, really. That was the problem.’

Dryden nodded. ‘And the Connor case… how exactly were they involved in that?’

‘The basic facts aren’t disputed: Joe saw the appeal in the newspaper for evidence in the Connor case, as I said. The article included the last known picture of Paul Gedney – that’s Connor’s alleged victim. In essence their statements would have been simple, as I understood it: that they had seen Gedney.’

‘So?’

Bardolph laughed, buttoning the jacket at his throat. ‘They saw him a month after the prosecution said Chips had beaten him to death at the holiday camp at Sea’s End. He was holed up in some old boat in the marsh along the coast. The police never found the body, you see. If they’d been able to make that ID in court – between the face on the poster and the face they’d seen, well then Chips would have been freed immediately. There would have been a review at the very least.’

‘Sea’s End,’ said Dryden. ‘The Dolphin?’

‘Yes. It’s still in business, actually – gone upmarket.’

Dryden saw the camp gates, that first sight of the crowded beach of 1974, and a single lit porthole shining in the marsh. ‘But this was in ’75?’ he asked.

Bardolph went on nodding, flipping the page and finding a colour photograph. He looked at it briefly, seemed to make a decision, and then held it out: ‘No. No – it was 1974. The summer. The trial was the following year. That’s them at the time… August.’

Dryden took the snapshot and felt the world around him recede, as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope, as he brought the snapshot close to his face. Three boys and a girl, a sandy path between dunes and a distant view of the sea. The familiarity of his own childhood face staring out
of the past was surreal, and the jolt of recognition made his heart contract. He walked to the balcony rail and looked out across the white Fen, hiding his eyes.

‘Declan is the one on the far left,’ said Bardolph.

Dryden nodded. Dex, the frightened loner armed only with the unpredictability of violence.

‘The others?’ asked Dryden, trying to keep the emotion from serrating his voice.

‘The other boy, the one with his arm round Declan’s shoulder, is Joe Petulengo. The girl on the end is Declan’s sister.’

Dryden nodded, confused. He flipped the picture over and read the pencilled caption on the back.

McIlroy – Smith – Unknown – McIlroy.

‘But it says Smith,’ said Dryden. ‘Not Petulengo.’

Bardolph was still rummaging through the paperwork. ‘Sure. Joe was from a traveller family; Smith was their adopted name. It’s common amongst the Romany: helps in business and avoids some nasty racism. He was plain Joe Smith until his marriage, I think. Times change, and by then he was on his feet, JSK was up and running. I guess he decided he was proud of his past, even if it was too late to change the company brand.’ Dryden saw it now, the stencilled logo on the factory unit door: JSK. Joe Smith Kites.

‘And the girl is Marcie Sley?’

Bardolph grunted. ‘Yup.’

The skin, Dryden thought, dusted with sand. ‘And the third boy – the one with the black hair?’ he asked.

Bardolph shrugged. ‘No idea. All we know is that his first name was Philip – which, as you will appreciate, is not an uncommon first name. He played with the others, but they never got his full name. The camp’s records haven’t survived – at least not the bookings. They had to leave early… they didn’t swap addresses or names.’

No, thought Dryden. There’d been no time for that. The picture had been taken on the second day by the woman Marcie had called ‘Grace’, when it seemed as if they had a lifetime in which to play together.

‘And Marcie’s not involved because…’

‘Because she’s blind. Identification is the key. She could have provided some corroboration of timing and so on. She was sighted at the time. But that’s not much good now, is it? What she can’t do is stand up in a court of law and identify the picture of Paul Gedney as that of the man she did see. She’s never seen that picture – she’s no use at all as a witness.’ Bardolph shivered. ‘Look. We need coffee – hang on a minute.’ He disappeared inside to fuss over one of the thermos flasks.

Dryden knew then: knew when they’d seen what they’d seen. That last night of the game.

Bardolph reappeared with coffees and another file, which he held awkwardly, leafing through the typed pages. ‘Once Declan decided to go up with Joe to see George Holme I talked through his evidence with him to see if it stacked up. Back in ’75, during the trial, the prosecution alleged that the victim died on the night of 5 August 1974 – at the Dolphin. But Declan and Joe’s evidence would make it clear that Gedney was alive a month later – on the 30th. Friday, August 30th.’

Dryden rested a fingertip on the image of his own young face. ‘Did he see what they saw? Could this… Philip… be a witness?’

‘Possibly. Joe and Declan seemed unsure. I guess they might run the picture again – see if they can find him. Holme could even take the statements they’ve got to appeal – but I doubt that would get very far.’

Pellets of hail began to fall and Dryden wrapped the
trench coat more closely to his bones. Had someone killed Declan McIlroy and Joe Petulengo to keep Chips Connor in jail? Did anyone know that he, Philip Dryden, was the missing child from the snapshot? And if they did, did they fear that he too had seen what they had seen the last night they’d played the game?

The Dolphin Holiday Camp

Friday, 30 August 1974

In the saltmarsh, under a covered boat, Philip lay still.

The dilemma was always the same one – an excruciating tension between the fear that he would never be found, and the fear that he would. Switching on his torch, he played the beam on his wristwatch: a Timex Christmas present with half-hearted luminosity. 8.42pm.

Twenty-five minutes had passed since he’d left the others by the sluice gate. He’d heard some footsteps almost immediately, timidly padding round the old boathouse. Dex. Almost certainly Dex. Then nothing, except the distant barrel-organ leitmotif of the fairground.